A smart home environment is created by integrating a plurality of smart devices, including intelligent, multi-sensing, network-connected devices, seamlessly with each other in a local area network and/or with a central server or a cloud-computing system to provide a variety of useful smart home functions. The smart devices have been developed to implement complicated functions and store/cache large amount of data locally, while having to maintain compact form factors (i.e., a number of functional modules of a smart device have to be packed tightly within the smart device). As the functions get complicated and the storage density increases, heat generated from the smart devices also increases. In the absence of effective and efficient heat dissipation mechanisms, this increased heat could compromise performance and cause failure of either individual functional modules or the entire smart device.
To dissipate heat generated by a tightly packed smart device, heat-generating functional modules of the smart device may make use of heat sinks that are coupled to a smart device or individual function modules of the smart device. The smart device or the functional modules may be mounted on top of heat sinks. Airflow from fans may pass by the surface of the heat sinks to help dissipate the heat. However, given the increasingly compact form factor, the combined heat dissipation effect of the heat sinks and the airflow is often insufficient. Thus, cooling systems normally have to include a large heat sink and/or operate their fans at high speeds, which results in noisier, less efficient, and more expensive systems that do not necessarily address the issue of insufficient heat dissipation throughout various smart devices. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a cooling system that addresses the above mentioned problems.